Biz Tips: How Does Intent Data and ABM Work Together?

November 27, 2019

Biz Tip:

How Does Intent Data and ABM Work Together?

We all know ABM is one of the hottest things to come along in marketing over the last decade – everyone is talking about it, and everyone is doing it. But one of the new, hot things to come along in recent years is intent data.

You could argue that intent data has been around for a while (just like you can argue that ABM has been around for a while), but now it’s becoming a standard part of the marketer’s tool chest (again, just like ABM)

However, it’s not clear to everyone how you can use ABM and intent data together. That’s why I sat down with Craig Rosenberg, Chief Analyst at TOPO. He explains that when you select the right accounts, layer on intent data, then turn those insights into action, that’s where the money is.

My conversations with Craig are always both lively and insightful, and this one is no different. Enjoy!

Actually, let’s do it back to back. Actually, that’s not gonna work, but this looks cool. Take this picture.

Craig: All right, what’ve we got?

Brandon: All right, so today, let’s talk about intent. It’s one of the new hot, sexy things these days and ABM is of course one of the hot, sexy things these days. How do they play together?

Craig: Is this a merger of hot, sexy things?

Brandon: This is it right here, this video is it.

Craig: You’ve got one hot, sexy thing over here…

That’s ABM in a nutshell. A hot, sexy thing merging with other hot, sexy things. But intent is very hot and sexy. In our data set, some of the biggest deals outside of marketing auotmation are coming from the intent data set, right? And it makes sense. I’ll get to the ABM part, but I love this idea of expanding our scope of what people are researching and looking at and where their interest is trending. That’s data we need, man, because if you think about what we did, we said, okay we’re account-based, right? And it actually looks hard. Let’s say you have a Engagio 2000, it’s like okay, here’s 2,000 leads, all right. Let’s get started. From zero, right. And the thing with intent data that’s really cool is, well here’s my 2,000, and here are the ones that are showing intent in whatever keywords correlate back to your solution, or competitors and these things.

As we believe intent data in the account-based function is the ultimate account selection criteria, from a data point of view. Meaning engagement data and intent data. These are both indicators that say, look, if you have your Engagio 2,000, which one should I start talking to now? And we might as well, like if you’re gonna make a bet, we might as well make a good bet.

Brandon: Sort by intent.

Craig: Yeah. Now, look, the key on intent though, is fit comes first. One of the reasons, when intent does not work is if you just assume intent is gonna lead you to the right kind of buyers. The reason the account-based idea even exists is because of a realization as a market. The B2B market, that’s… There are accounts that are better for our business than others. So the first thing you gotta do, is you gotta figure out who fits our ideal customer profile. You create that target account list. Now we use intent to decide when. When to go work on ’em, and we use intent to figure out, well, what are they looking at to actually create customized, personalized messaging along the way. So, the promise is great. I think people are buying it, people are using it. I think one of their keys next will be how to activate it, right?

Brandon: Absolutely.

Craig: That’s the key, you know? ‘Cause it’s a great idea that everyone’s like, “Well, what do we do now?”…

Brandon: What do you actually do with this data?

Craig: Yeah. And once we unlock activation, the market’s already going like this, ABMs markets two sexy beings, or whatever you said, come together. When activation becomes even more of a reality on the intent side, it’s just gonna go like this, and when more automagic stuff starts to happen, right… We see intent happening in particular keywords related to you. What can happen automagically, what can be triggered automagically versus just triggering only human sort of… Triggering the drone, operator who then goes and operates that, you know, and as some of you guys care about is how do we start in to programs out of that intent selection… Situation.

Yeah, so anyway, that’s the two sexy beings, they go really well hand in hand. I mean, I tell ya man, if you can… You love and you embrace your target account list, we’ve done everything we can to figure out who those companies are in the fit, now we just can watch ’em, and some are not confined to what they do on our own properties. We get to watch ’em everywhere. Don’t worry.

Brandon: Little creepy.

Craig: I knew you were gonna say that. Of course it is, in B2B we don’t care about creepy. Like, it’s B2C that cares about creepy. Actually, I would say this. It’s hilarious ’cause everyone says creepy, but every marketer wants to be creepier, they just won’t say it.

Brandon: I’d say that’s right.

Craig: They don’t say, “Hey, I wanna get creepy”, like, “Yeah can we go do it?”. They just want more data. And the data that they can’t get is the data that they’re most excited about. And it makes sense.

Brandon: Yeah, and value’s in the data, for sure.

Craig: Well the value’s in the data, but then the value’s in the activation.

Brandon: Which, yeah, what you actually do with the data.

Craig: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

So, so yeah, I’m excited about it, too, and I’m excited as these two sexy beings come together and grow together. That’s pretty exciting as well.

Brandon: We better stop the video here.

Craig: Yeah, this is… No, it went well, ’cause it’s a good topic, but yeah the sexy thing, you kicked that off, that wasn’t me. I just went with it, so.